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– We have not said that at the national level we see that we should backtrack on the objective of evaluating all patients. We want to make it very clear that hitting the ceiling now is a temporary situation. There are prerequisites to making sure you have a testing capacity that meets the demand and need that exists, says Karin Tegmark Wisell, department head at the Swedish Public Health Agency.
This spring, there were concerns that several important sectors of society would not be able to sustain their operations if the Corona epidemic dragged on.
The capacity of The test was still low, which meant that all colds had to stay home. By offering tests to those in socially important jobs, staff who have received a negative test will be able to return to work more quickly. In this way, the business would be insured.
But before the strategy he began to use in practice, the spread of the infection decreased while the ability to perform tests increased. Instead, the goal was to evaluate all people with symptoms.
But despite the fact that we are now testing many times more than in the spring, several regions have trouble offering testing to all people with symptoms. One solution might be to go back to the strategy with priority groups and mainly offer tests to those with socially important jobs.
But it is This is not the time for that now, says Karin Tegmark Wisell.
– I understand that it will be an issue that will come up now when various regions reach the ceiling. But a turning point in the strategy is whether it is to identify the healthy people who go to work or to identify the sick people. And we see that we are definitely on the side of the watershed when it comes to identifying the sick. And then it is not a question of returning to these prio groups.
She says that if regions cannot test all people with symptoms, there are state-acquired labs with capacity that they can use.
– There is the opportunity for all regions to receive support if they do not want to focus on their own management.
And they have to prioritize therefore, it is more about not testing people with very mild symptoms as children. Or relatives of already sick people who still have to stay home according to the recommendations.
– We do not want to point in the direction in which the regions should see the strategy as an opportunity to return to the agreed objective of offering evidence, says Karin Tegmark Wisell.
